Mr Bolton had "goaded" him about sleeping with girlfriend Michelle Dooley, the Old Bailey heard.

Paramedics pronounced Mr Bolton, 28, of Sheephouse Way, Old Malden, dead after he was carried outside the flat in Thursley House.

Nichols, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter before his trial, will be sentenced on Friday, March 14.

A jury returned its verdict on Tuesday afternoon after a day of deliberation.

Prosecutors had said Nichols, of Fordham, Excelsior Close on the Cambridge Road Estate, killed Mr Bolton intentionally in a “jealous rage”.

Nichols’ defence team said he had lost control of himself after repeated taunts from Mr Bolton, who barrister Lewis Power QC said was “lording it” over Nichols.

Mr Bolton had posted about his new relationship on Facebook and given Nichols, who has an IQ of 57 according to recent tests, a photo of himself and Miss Dooley kissing.

Roger Thornton, whose flat the stabbing took place, told the court last week that Nichols, an old school friend, seemed a “totally different person to what I have known” when he saw him attacking Mr Bolton, stabbing him seven times.

Nichols is an only child, whose parents split when he was very young, the court heard.

Until the stabbing he lived with his mother, having suffered a nervous breakdown in 1995 and not worked in more than a decade.

Nichols told the court he could not remember stabbing Mr Bolton, but knew later he had done something wrong.

After leaving Mr Thornton’s flat he withdrew £300 and went to see his brother in Havant, Hampshire, where he was arrested on Tuesday, June 11 last year, the day after the attack.

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